Which of the following statements is correct about the composition of the agriculture sector and employment in GDP post-independence?

Correct — D. The response sheet cuts this option off mid-sentence, so read what survives: the agricultural sector's share of GDP declined significantly — and then the word 'but', which sets up a contrast with employment.

Since independence output has shifted towards industry and services, and agriculture's share of national output has fallen steeply.

The share of the workforce in agriculture has not fallen anything like as fast. Far more people still depend on farming than the sector's share of output would suggest, and that mismatch is what option (d) states.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  The proportion of both the agriculture sector and employment in GDP has declined — The near-miss. Agriculture's GDP share did decline, and so, far more slowly, did its employment share — but saying both simply fell erases the contrast the question is built on.
• (b)
  The proportion of employment has declined significantly but not the share of the — This reverses the asymmetry, making employment the item that fell sharply while the output share held. The real pattern runs the other way. The response sheet truncates this option too.
• (c)
  The proportion of both the agriculture sector and employment in GDP has increased — Increased is wrong on both counts. Agriculture's share of India's GDP has fallen over the decades since independence, not risen.

This is the standard account of structural change in the Indian economy.

A developing economy is expected to move workers and output together out of agriculture and into industry and services. In India the two came apart: output moved far faster than people did.
Agriculture's share of employment has fallen since independence, but nothing like as steeply as its share of GDP.

The consequence is low output per worker in agriculture, and it is the setting for the disguised and seasonal unemployment SSC asks about elsewhere — more hands on a field than the field needs, so removing some would not reduce what it produces.

Key facts

• Agriculture's share of India's GDP has declined steadily since independence.
• Agriculture's share of total employment has declined far more slowly than its share of output.
• Disguised unemployment describes workers whose removal from a farm would not reduce its output.
• Agriculture remains the largest employing sector in India even as its output share has shrunk.

Common traps

• Assuming a falling GDP share must mean fewer people working in agriculture
• Reading the truncated options as though the visible text were the whole statement

No directly related past PYQ was found.